A Morning's Walk From London To Kew Part 7

The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death as in life, if you would excite the notice of the mult.i.tude, you must in the grave have a splendid mausoleum, or in walking the streets you must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains of #THE FIRST PAINTER OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL#, in fancy-pictures, and one #OF THE FIRST# in the cla.s.ses of landscape and portrait;--a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was developed, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his amiable private character as by his eminence in the chief of Fancy's Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter--that the poet only exhibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is called upon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but the successful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his hand as well as conceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons--but far more so a great painter, who a.s.sumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man was #Thomas Gainsborough#, before whose modest tomb I stood! The following are the words engraven on the stone:--

#Thomas Gainsborough#, esq.

died August 2, 1788.

Also the body of #Gainsborough Dupont#, esq.

who died Jan. 20, 1797, aged 42 years.

Also, Mrs. #Margaret Gainsborough#, wife of the above Thomas Gainsborough, esq, who died Dec. 17, 1798, in the 72d year of her age.

A little to the eastward lie the remains of another ill.u.s.trious son of art, the modest #Zoffany#, whose Florence Gallery, Portraits of the Royal Family, and other pictures, will always raise him among the highest cla.s.s of painters. He long resided on this Green, and, like Michael Angelo, t.i.tian, and our own #West#, produced master-pieces at four-score. The words on the monument are:

Sacred to the Memory of #John Zoffany#, R.A.

who died Nov. 11, 1810, aged 87 years.

It was a remarkable coincidence, that the bones of #Gainsborough# and #Zoffany# should thus, without premeditation, have been laid side by side; and that, but a few weeks before I paid my visit to this spot, delighted crowds had been daily drawn together to view their princ.i.p.al works, combined with those of #Wilson# and #Hogarth#, in forming an attractive metropolitan exhibition. On that occasion every Englishman felt proud of the native genius of our #Gainsborough#. It was ably opposed in one line by a #Wilson#, and in another by a #Zoffany#; yet the works of the untutored #Gainsborough# and #Hogarth# served to prove that every great artist must be born such; and that superiority in human works is the result of original apt.i.tude, and cannot be produced by any servile routine of education, however specious, imposing, sedulous, or costly.

This valley of the Thames is, however, sanctified every-where by relics which call for equal reverence. But a mile distant on my right, in Chiswick Church-yard, lie the remains of the painting moralist #Hogarth#; who invented a universal character, or species of moral revelation, intelligible to every degree of intellect, in all ages and countries; who opened a path to the kindred genius of a #Burnett# and a #Wilkie#; and who conferred a deathless fame on the manners, habits, and chief characters of his time. And, but a mile on my left, in Richmond Church, lie the remains of #Thomson#, the poet of nature, of liberty, and of man--who displayed his powers only for n.o.ble purposes; who scorned, like the vile herd of modern rhymesters, to ascribe _glory_ to injustice, _heroism_ to the a.s.sa.s.sins of the champions of liberty, or _wisdom_ to the mischievous prejudices of weak princes; and who, by a.s.serting in every line the moral dignity of his art, became an example of poetical renown, which has been ably followed by #Glover#, #Akenside#, #Cowper#, #Robinson#, #Burns#, #Barlow#, #Barbauld#, #Wolcot#, #Moore#, and #Byron#.

The fast-declining Sun, and my wearied limbs here reminded me that I was the slave of nature, and of nature's laws; and that I had neither time, nor power, to excurse or go farther. My course, therefore, necessarily terminated on this spot; and here I must take leave of the reader, who has been patient, or liberal enough, to accompany me.

For my own part, I had been highly gratified with the great volume, ten or twelve miles long, by two or three broad, in the study of which I had employed the lengthened morning; though this volume of my brief a.n.a.lysis the reader will doubtless find marked by the short-sightedness and imperfections which attend every attempt of human art to compress an infinite variety into a finite compa.s.s.

In looking back at the incidents of the day, which the language of custom has, with reference to our repasts, denominated #THE MORNING#, I could not avoid feeling the strong a.n.a.logy which exists between such an excursion as that which I have here described and #THE LIFE of MAN#. Like that, and all things measured by #TIME# and #s.p.a.cE#, it had had its #BEGINNING#--its eventful #COURSE#--and its #END# determined by physical causes.

On emerging in the morning, I foresaw as little as the child foresees his future life, what were to be the incidents of my journey. I proceeded in each successive hour even as he proceeds in each year. I jostled no one, and no one disturbed me. My feelings were those of peace, and I suffered from no hostility. My inclinations were virtuous, and I have experienced the rewards of virtue. Every step had therefore been productive of satisfaction, and I had no-where had cause to look behind me with regret.

In this faithful journal, I have ventured to smile at folly; I have honestly reprehended bad pa.s.sions, and I have sincerely sympathized with their victims. May all my readers be led to smile, reprehend, and sympathize with me; and I solicit this result--for their sakes--for the sake of truth--and in the hope that, if our feelings have been reciprocal, our mutual labours will not have been wasted! At the end of my short career, I conscientiously looked back on the incidents of my course with the complacency with which all may look back in old-age on the incidents of well-spent lives. Let no one sneer at the comparison, for, when human life has pa.s.sed away, in what degree are its multiplied cares and chequered scenes more important than the simple events which attend a morning's walk? Look on the graves of that church-yard, and see in #THEM# the representations of hundreds of anxious lives! Are not those graves, then, said I, the end of thousands of busy cares and ambitious projects? Was not life the #MERE DREAM# of their now senseless tenants--like the trackless path of a bird in the air, or of a fish in the waters? Were they not #the Phantasmagoria# which, in their day, filled up the s.h.i.+fting scene of the world,--and are we not, in our several days, similar shadows, which modify the light for a season, and then disappear to make room for others like ourselves? May not the events of a morning which slides away, and leaves no traces behind it, be correctly likened therefore to the entire course of human life? The one, like the other, may be well or ill spent--idly dissipated or beneficially employed;--and the chequered incidents will be found to be similar to those which mark the periods of the longest life.

In conclusion, I cannot avoid wis.h.i.+ng that my example may be followed, in other situations, by minds variously stored and directed by different inquiries. Like the day which has just been recorded, the incidents of every situation, and the thoughts which pa.s.s without intermission through every mind, would, in a similar portion of time, fill similar volumes, which, as indices of man's intellectual machinery, might serve the purpose of the dial of a clock, or the gnomon of a sun-dial, and prove agreeable sources of amus.e.m.e.nt, as well as efficacious means of disseminating valuable principles and useful instruction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE AUTHOR'S ROUTE.]